


restless winds & letterboxes

by pheonix85



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (kind of epistolary rather), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, College Student Peter Parker, Epistolary, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sex, Irondad Big Bang 2020, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Canon Fix-It, Timey-Wimey, he's having a hard time, lakehouse au, until it's not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pheonix85/pseuds/pheonix85
Summary: A year after the events of Far From Home, Peter begins college with his identity known to everyone.He's assigned an anonymous email pen pal as part of a project for a class and begins to build a relationship with the unknown contact. He finds solace in the stranger's advice, the anonymity they both decide to maintain becomes a sanctuary, but there is something strange about the man he’s assigned, and it takes Peter the entire school year to figure out why.It changes everything.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 44
Kudos: 235
Collections: Irondad Big Bang 2020





	1. Fall

**Author's Note:**

> *bit of spoiler info at the end*
> 
> there's a lot of this that are emails back and forth; the italicized formatted left are Peter's, the bolded italicized on the right are the other guy's, just to clear up any confusion. This is my first time trying out one of these types of fics, please be gentle lol
> 
> thank you anyone who clicked on this after seeing this is a 20k+ one shot when I first posted it. I've updated this to break it up across three chapters, just to make it a little easier to read if you can't do it all in one go. I would stay away from the comments on the first chapter, as it was posted as a 1 shot earlier. 21k words is so much and it started to bug me lol so I hope I'm not tripping anyone up there. this definitely got away from me and turned into a monster, and I appreciate you taking the time to read it. i hope you enjoy.

**August 2025**

Peter always notices the way everyone goes quiet; the way they stop and stare and move out of his way.

It’s how his freshman year at MIT starts. He and Ned move into the dorms the Friday before to avoid the crowds and Peter barely leaves the room at all. Things aren’t quite as bad as they had been this time last year, but the novelty of his presence is back, and he hasn’t missed the stares and the whispers.

“Ignore it,” Ned says firmly. “Don’t apologize for being who you are. Don’t worry, I’ll stick with you.”

He walks with Peter that first morning until they have to go to separate buildings. Both science majors, just different focuses, and Ned doesn’t even blink as the crowds part to let them through.

“...does Superman sweat? And if he does, does that mean that his uniform gets dirty? Can it be washed like regular clothes?” Ned looks over at Peter, a genuinely thoughtful look on his face. “What do you do with your suit when it gets dirty?”

“I have a process,” Peter answers, clipped, and without further acknowledgment. He’s staring up at the building he’s heading towards, trying to ignore the dread in his gut. He feels Ned step closer to him, leaning in to whisper.

“You alright?"

Peter nods. He’s been up against some terrifying things, but somehow, being surrounded by hundreds of your peers who for sure already have an opinion about who you are is as daunting as anything he’s faced. Peter turns and offers his hand, and Ned follows through to finish their traditional handshake before they nod to one another and head off with a promise to meet at the University Center for lunch.

The building is old but clearly recently renovated. Well lit, wide hallways, fresh paint---a lot of places wanted to start over after everything settled when everyone came back. Peter makes his way towards the assigned room, checking the schedule in his hand more than once. When he gets to the top of the second floor, he looks around at the numbers of the rooms seemingly out of order, perhaps lost in the shuffle of the remodel. He looks over to his right and sees a couple of other students who don’t have the terrified, lost freshman look in their eyes and he starts towards them, only to stop when they look up at him and stare, almost as if they’re afraid of him.

Ah. Right.

It was no secret that Peter Parker---Spiderman---had gotten into MIT. The Bugle had been relentless since his unmasking after his school trip in Europe had made international headlines and no interference by the Avengers or Stark Industries was able to stop Jonah Jameson from labeling him a menace.

The Accords weren’t so much an issue anymore, a solitary blessing effect of the Snap. They’d begun to work something out with the government but it was still ongoing and as such, Peter stuck to the city and only stepped in to help with SHIELD when it was really important. He only had to deal with public opinion and sometimes that was more than enough.

Most people in the city and in Queens liked him. It was when he got outside of where he normally patrolled that things got dicey. Going places where people only had media coverage to rely on their judgment of him sometimes provoked strong opinions. 

Peter stops in his tracks, holding up his hands, the schedule crumpled by his clenching fist. “I’m...I just need some help getting to my class.”

There’s a girl amongst them who looks around at her friends then rolls her eyes. “He’s not gonna bite, come on guys,” She shakes her head and steps forward with her hand out and Peter gives her the paper, relief overloading his system. She offers him a reassuring smile and looks down.

“Ugh. Becker. I had him for Business Ethics last year. Not a bad guy but make sure you drink some coffee to stay awake.” She hands him the schedule back and points down the hall. “Hang a left when you can’t go any further, then it’s three doors in on your right.”  
  


“Thank you so much.”

She smiles at him and it makes him cringe a little as he walks away. Sure, he doesn’t want people to hate him but he doesn’t want their pity either. He mostly wants…

He wants to be Peter Parker again. Just...Peter Parker, without the Spiderman stuff affecting the way people treat him.

Peter finds his way to the classroom and slides into one of the desks in the back of the room, trying to keep a low profile. The students filter in and he keeps to himself, flipping open a notebook to prepare for what he expects to be a pretty boring class.

It’s a business course, something about how to network, proper etiquette, and basic 101 stuff around how to communicate in a professional setting. Peter sighs as the professor passes back the syllabus, taking one with thanks and passing it on. He skims the schedule and finds nothing terribly interesting, so he lets it slide onto the desk and waits.

The professor drones on. The girl in the hall had a good point, and Peter makes a mental note to grab a very large cup of coffee at the university center on his way in from now on. He’s never been really big into coffee, mostly because Tony never kept creamer or anything else to add to it, and Peter didn’t like it black so…

He stops that train of thought and swallows. He’s had coffee since he’d come back, sure, but it’s never been a staple. Maybe he shouldn’t, he doesn’t even really know if it’s effective with his metabolism. The smell reminds him of the time in the lab, watching Mr. Stark work, and somehow, Peter thinks it helps to calm him down.

“Alright,” Professor Becker says, drawing up from where he’s been leaning on his desk. “If you flip to the other side, you’ll see instructions on our little exercise for the semester. Sometime this week, you will receive an email from me at your student account with an alumnus contact who will be your mentor for the duration of this course. They are meant to remain anonymous, as some of our alumni are rather well known. The anonymity is meant for you to develop a real relationship with them, rather than one based on preconceived expectations of their experiences.”

The direction gives Peter a sour feeling in his stomach and he slides low in his seat as the professor continues the explanation. That’s great for everyone else in the class, but his student username will be easy enough to associate him with the enhanced person he is, so what about his anonymity? What if whoever he’s assigned, what if they hate Spiderman?

And, he thinks defensively, who says he needs a mentor anyways? He already had one of them, an amazing one- probably the best. So maybe he could just use that internship to leverage getting out of this. He doesn’t need to network---he’s close family friends with the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world.

“Mr. Parker, I can appreciate your point,” The professor tells him later when Peter visits during office hours. “Mr. Stark was, indeed, exceptional. I expect especially in the capacity of your...unique studies.” 

Peter turns pink and looks away. It’s never been officially announced through Stark Industries that Spiderman and Iron Man were connected but it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. 

“You’ll receive the contact, just like everyone else, randomly selected from our database of all those who have elected to participate. Consider this an opportunity to expand your industry footprint."

Peter doesn’t share his optimism. He figures he’ll just go along with what the instructor has told him to do---the worst that can happen is the alumni won’t like him but that’s a sentiment he’s become accustomed to over the past year. 

The email comes at the end of the week. It’s a standard template, with only the contact specified. Peter skims over the information. The domain name is recognizable because it’s from a public, free email client Stark Industries began to offer in 2013 after Gmail really took off. It wasn’t widely used but it makes Peter smile just a bit.

It takes a few days but finally, Ned is gone to the library and he has the room to himself. He feels a bit foolish, struggling to figure out what to write to a complete stranger. What can he share, without giving away too much? 

And it’s not fair, he decides, that this person gets to be a ghost, so Peter registers his own account separate from the student one he’s using and decides that’ll be how he goes about this. Dr. Becker will just have to deal. Peter begins to type, hoping it just becomes something.

_Hi_ , he begins.

_Hello?_ He thinks to himself, wondering if this should be more formal, then shakes his head. He spaces through to the next line, and decides to just go for it, stream of consciousness; he takes a deep breath, letting his fingers fly across the keys.

_This feels a little strange. I hope you’re the right person. I’m writing this as a student in Dr. Becker’s Intro to Business Comms class at MIT._

_My name is---_

His hands stop, hanging above the keys. Peter Parker, he almost writes, but then he remembers. Thank goodness he caught himself. He imagines some highly esteemed scientist on the other side seeing his name and sneering at his message, overcome with distaste at the idea of his vigilante side job, picking up the phone and complaining to the Dean…

  
Peter shakes his head, breathing out through his mouth. The Dean was well aware he was on campus, and had welcomed Peter himself. He sucks at his teeth.

_My name is Peter,_ he continues. _I got your email address this week. I think I'm supposed to ask you about work stuff but it’s only our first week of classes. I guess I’ll just tell you that I’m hoping to be a Physics major and I’m not really sure what else after that. I hope that’s okay. I’m not really sure what else to say. Hopefully, I'll have more as the semester goes on._

_I look forward to hearing from you soon._

_Peter_

He, of course, proofreads and re-writes sentences and changes out words and finally, just _sends_ it because this is dumb. It’s a dumb, stupid, elective exercise to show how they as inexperienced kids are dealing with their first brush with “professionals”, completely ignoring that some of them may have faced things more intimidating and so, really, Peter figures this is going to be a blow-off assignment. He and this person---he doesn’t even know their _name_ for crying out loud----will exchange pleasantries. Peter decides he’ll try and come up with some basic school, business, network type things to ask about and leave it at that.

It’s hard because Pepper is already talking about him getting involved with Stark Industries. Which, you know, it’s great. Having an in with the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company isn’t anything to shrug off, and he’s happy about it, but he’s also never just considered what he might _want_ to do, and if it’s any different than what he’s talked about with Pepper, or Happy, or May.

Peter presses send and he closes his laptop. Whatever happens, happens. College is serious, he’s by no means _not_ taking this seriously, but this isn’t one of the courses in his focus and he probably needs to be more worried about those than taking up with a glorified penpal for three or four months.

Ned tries to get him to join a fraternity. Peter is decidedly against that, preferring to spend time in the robotics lab or the library, even though they both still go out and try to make friends around campus. 

MJ is still in the city, at Columbia. She’s studying journalism, of all things---says she can be a part of the solution one day, fix the problems of critical media. He misses her, but they still talk a few times a week, video chats or phone calls, and that helps with everything too. 

It’s the first week of classes and the assignments start to pile up. Between classes he stops by the library and skims over club pamphlets, picking up a few. He smiles down at one of them, turning it over to read the glossy backside.

Peter could be a photographer. He grins, thinking of the kinds of shots he could get in mid-air, sailing through the city on his webs. He tucks the flyer away with a thought to look into it a little more later. 

It’s almost a week before he gets a reply from the mystery contact. 

_**Peter,** _

_**Lesson #1 about being a successful adult is that we’re all just making it up as we go along, so don’t worry too much about it.** _

_**To give you a top-down intro, I’m a business owner of a modest but successful company I inherited from my father. I’m still an engineer by trade with a couple of doctorates thrown in there for good measure, I'm not just coasting here.** _

_**How are your first couple of weeks? Any intimidating professors I can help with? Are the dorms any better than they used to be? Any misgivings I can impart some wisdom on?** _

_**If it’s all the same, I’d like to keep it a little close to the chest--- I kind of have a thing for the dark and mysterious, as it were, and I’d rather do without some kind of bias if you did by chance know who I was.** _

Peter takes that to mean he probably would.

_**You can call me The Mechanic. It’s nice to meet you, Peter. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long and wonderful friendship.** _

_**Until next time.** _

_**T** _

Peter smiles a little. The guy doesn’t sound too bad. He was worried the person may be pretentious, self-important or overly clinical. It was only one email, though, it could turn into that but he kind of likes that the person wants to fly under the radar. He doesn’t press for details, maybe he never will, and maybe, just maybe, this is a real opportunity for Peter to just be himself again, if only a little, just enough to be normal again.

* * *

“So. Tell me everything, I want to hear all of it."

May is beaming at him from the laptop screen, arms folded on the desk in front of her. He’s a few weeks into the semester, and they’ve tried to text back and forth regularly but he hasn’t seen her/// in weeks and he aches with how much he misses her. He leans forward with a soft smile.

“It’s going pretty good. Classes aren’t bad. We’re not really into a whole lot yet, but we have midterms in a few weeks and I keep waiting for it to get hard.”

Her smile widens. She leans closer to the screen, whispering conspiratorially. “How’s bunking with Ned?”

Peter fights a laugh. “It’s good. I know we hung out all the time but there is like, some stuff? Like he’s not great about washing his bowls right away and sometimes he leaves his towel on the bathroom floor instead of hanging it up…”

May grins, raising her brows. “So normal, roommate stuff.”

He nods. “I guess so. I’m sure I do some annoying stuff too.”

“And how’s MJ?”

“We still call each other every night,” He assures. “She likes school. She’s getting into all these clubs which, I guess isn’t that weird? I mean we did decathlon and robotics, but she’s like...weirdly enthusiastic for some of it.”

May’s smile drops a little. “And you’re...are you not checking that stuff out?”

Peter shrugs. “I was thinking about looking into photography? Thought it might be a cool, chill thing to get into. Taking pictures of birds and stuff you know?”

May peers back at him, expression a little unreadable. “I guess. I suppose I just figured you’d look into your own robotics thing or something. I mean you’re at MIT and all.” She cocks her head to the side. “What’s going on, Pete?”

“It’s nothing,” He insists, but he feels his cheeks heat up. He glances back to make sure their dorm room door is still closed---Ned won’t be back from his last course for another hour or so---and he faces back to her with a sigh. “People are just...weird sometimes here. About me. You know.”

May’s expression hardens. “About the Spiderman stuff?”

Peter has to laugh a little. “It’s kind of a big deal, right?” He shrugs. “Not that I mean, I'm a big deal, I’m not acting like that, but like...everything is a lot.” He stares down at his fingers, picking at one. “They’re either afraid of me, or a little star-struck or, like, really don’t like me.”

“Have people been harassing you about it?”

“No! May---” He sighs, exasperated. “I mean, I have my whole sixth sense thing, you know…”

“Peter tingle.” She says with a serious nod. When he gives her a deadpanned glare, she winks at him.

He’s finally gotten her to a point where she only makes that joke in private.

“---my _sense_ thing. It kind of picks up when someone isn’t thrilled to be around me. Nothing too crazy, but enough that I’m not exactly looking to be friends.”

“And so you’ve decided to not live your life because of it?” She asks, skeptical, tone hinting at disapproval. 

“I’m gonna join the photography club.”

“So you’re gonna jump right into your twilight years?” She asks, skeptical. “You gonna start studying the different types of birds that live in Central Park?”

“Don’t be mean,” He chides. “Photography is an art form. And you _know_ that’s not it. I’m just...settling. Trying to blend in a little more, make sure everyone knows I'm not really a menace or something…”

“A menace, huh? Those sound like someone else’s words.” The corner of her mouth is twisted into a grimace and Peter expects she’s about 10 seconds away from picking up the phone and, not for the first time, attempting to give the editor of the Bugle a piece of her mind.

“It’s fine,” He insists, softer now. “It’s not such a bad thing, laying low. I’m kind of tired being the center of attention after the last few years.”

May recognizes an ending to a disagreement when she hears it. She nods a little, though clearly not convinced, and leans back in her seat. “As long as you’re happy, Pete.”

“I am happy, May,” He says, leaning forward. “I just get tired of it sometimes. Last year was hard enough and I'm just waiting...to you know. Be just Peter again. Be like everyone else. I think I thought maybe this would be like that, and it’s the opposite.”

“I think that ship may have sailed a while ago, kiddo.”

“Don’t I know it.” He sighs, his brows jumping. “I do have this kind of cool assignment though. I’ve been...emailing with this guy? Like an alumnus or something? Only neither of us knows who the other is.”

Her eyes narrow. “You have an assignment to email back and forth with a strange man you don’t know?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “The _school_ knows who he is, it’s part of the assignment. It’s so we aren’t biased or something. I know it sounds dumb but...I actually kind of like him? From the few emails we’ve exchanged, he seems cool.”

May gives him a curious look. “What do you talk about?”

“School, mostly. There are one or two professors that are still here from his time. He’s helped me with a couple of concepts I was having issues with too. Gave me a few cool ideas that I think I may consider for some of my labs.” Peter shrugs. “He doesn’t know who I am either, really. Doesn’t know that I'm...you know.”

“An Avenger.”

Peter flushes. He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to that, not sure he’s ever really supposed to. “Yeah, I guess. I haven’t...I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to treat me like...something special or worse.”

He doesn’t have to elaborate on the worse. The unveiling of his identity had been a mess. He’d hidden out for weeks with Pepper at the lakehouse, he’d done interviews to try and make himself seem more palatable to the press and the public, he’d met with a variety of government representatives to advocate against an Accords 2.0 situation. He’d developed a reputation, a persona, and none of it was all him, not really.

May smiles. “Well, then, good. I’m happy you feel like you have someone to talk to, someone that makes you feel like...you, again.”

“You make me feel like me too,” He assures. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know what you meant, honey, don’t worry about it. I think it’s good you have someone you feel like you can confide in…” She trails off. “Talk shop and all that with, I mean. You know, something that’s not all about---”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean,” And he does. 

Every other person he goes to for guidance, now, it’s all through that lens. And sure, his relationship with Tony had started like that but it hadn’t _been_ like that, not the whole time. They’d become friends, Mr. Stark knew what it was like to be the guy in the suit. He wasn’t someone trying to make you feel better about something they could only imagine. Mr. Stark had been---

Mr. Stark had been a lot. To him. And this guy, this guy isn’t Mr. Stark, Peter doesn’t want him to be, he doesn’t want anyone to ever be Mr. Stark to him because some shoes are just too big to fill but…

He needs something. Something, someone, anyone who doesn’t look at him the way everyone else looks at him---like they already know him, like he should already have it halfway figured out when he doesn’t have anything figured out. 

“You’re gonna be fine, Pete,” May brings him back to their chat, a small smile on her face for reassurance. “This type of thing, it’s always an adjustment.” She pauses, smile widening, hesitant. “I miss you here. The place is quiet without you.”

Peter relaxes at that, smirks a little. “I’m sure Happy keeps you occupied a little though, right?”

“Watch _it_.” But she laughs and flips her hair. 

“MJ is coming up in a couple of weekends,” He follows up quickly. “So I’ll make sure we do this then, too, so you can catch up with her. And tell Happy I say hi. You know I miss you too, right Aunt May?”

She softens, leaning towards the screen. “I do. We’ll see you soon though. You’re coming home early for Thanksgiving right?”

Peter nods. Pepper and Rhodey and Morgan are coming to their apartment, which is much bigger than the one they’d had in Queens before the Snap. He’s gonna help clean and get the spare rooms ready, even though it means he’ll have to sleep on the couch in the living room. But it’ll be worth it, to have everyone under one roof.

“I’ll make sure to skype you when MJ is here, I promise,” Peter says, and he presses his fingers to his mouth before pressing them to the laptop screen. “I love you, May.”  
  


“I love you too, Peter.” She presses her fingers back, still smiling. “Take care of yourself.”

* * *

Peter gets an email from his alumni penpal before he has a chance to follow up to let the guy know he’d gotten a B+ on the lab he’d asked for tips on. It’s a little weird----they’ve only exchanged a few messages, but he figures this would keep with the pattern of school question---school answers. When he opens it, he grins.

_**Hey kid,** _

_**Small favor to ask, just cause I’m a little out of my depth here. This is gonna sound weird, but I couldn’t think of a better option. I have this...intern, kid. He’s like...he’s smart. Whip-smart, super nerdy, but he’s a nice, good kid. I like him. You’d probably like him, same cloth and all that but I just...sometimes I feel like I'm missing something. We had a bit of a rough patch when he started working with me last year, but we’ve been doing better...I thought. I don’t know, I’m just not great with the communication thing, never really had a great...example of that. He’s a few years shy of you, you got any pearls of wisdom you can relay as a recent ex-high schooler?** _

Peter considers it for a moment. It’s hard to give advice without much context so he thinks back to his own experience, with Mr. Stark. Granted, those circumstances were different, right? Whoever this guy is, surely his intern isn’t a superhumanly enhanced teenager to an already established superhero, so Peter thinks to the root of the problems, where he really chafed under Mr. Stark’s guidance.

_T,_

_I mean...the guy I interned for in high school was pretty great but he could be a little...kind of like a know it all sometimes? And like, he did. Know it all. More than me, at least, but it took us a while to get to a point where he’d listen to what I had to say and really think about it, so maybe make sure to do that?_

_Oh, and don’t lie to them. Like...if you have to soften the blow or something, still don’t lie about it. It's the worst thing. Just let them know exactly what you want and if they can’t do it, don’t be judgemental or angry about it. If he’s in high school, he’s probably not on your level, right?_

_Let me know how it goes._

_Oh, and by the way, I got a B+ on that lab. I know it’s not quite an A, but it’s way better than where I was so thank you!_

_Talk to you soon,_

_Peter_

\---------

_**Pete,** _

_**I’m gonna take a note out of your suggestion and say---well done on the lab assignment.** _ _**I knew you could get it done. If you need any help next time, you know who to get ahold of.** _

_**Thanks for the advice, btw. I’ll keep you in the loop.** _

_**T.** _

* * *

MJ comes up a few weeks later, just as he told May she would.

The first night is actually great. There’s this quad movie night the school puts on with this big projector and some movies from the early 2000’s. Peter, MJ, and Ned take some old blankets and make popcorn in the common room before heading over and settling in. MJ lays back against Peter’s chest, his arms folding in front of hers, pulling them close together and as the darkness settles over them, well into the first movie, he presses a kiss to the top of her head and she squeezes his hand. 

Ned invites a girl he’s been talking to for a few weeks. When she meets Peter, she shakes his hand and smiles. She doesn’t mention anything about hearing all about him. He knows that is probably Ned’s doing but he doesn’t say anything. He listens idly as she kind of hits it off with MJ---the girl is a gamer, but she has a fervor for revolutionaries, and she and MJ spend a good twenty minutes talking about their favorite writers. 

Peter lets his thoughts drift from the movie. This is what he’d always thought college would be---classes, new friends, maybe a girlfriend and making memories. _Who he was_ kind of put a cloud above all of that, but he could still have it.

It finally gets darker and the movies end around 11. They walk back to their dorms after it’s all said and done, while others from the viewing go off in search of parties around campus. Ned informs them, as they enter the building where their dorms are, that he’s going to stay over with his new friend, surprising both Peter and MJ, leaving them alone, together for the night. Ned grins at him as they curve away from each other at the elevator, and Peter rolls his eyes.

It’s not the first time he and MJ have stayed together. It wasn’t even the first that they _slept_ together. They tumble together into bed, soft kisses and gentle touches as they settle in. When they’re done, Peter crawls back up to the head of the bed, a small smile on his face as he lays his head on MJ’s chest. She begins to speak first, softly, telling him about her classes and her roommate, who isn’t terrible but isn’t great, and how she’s excited for him to come to visit closer to Christmas because MIT gets out a week before they do. 

She goes on and on, running her fingers through his hair as he presses his head against her chest, listening to her heartbeat. The rhythm can be so comforting, that of a heart---steady and sure. It can even you out, provide a strange sort of comfort in being so close to someone, not to mention the practical effects. Peter contributes, asking questions and chiming in with words that slow, and he slides to sleep there, soundly for the first time in weeks. 

The next night, he’s not so lucky.

They’re getting pizza off-campus, keeping to themselves. Ned has brought his friend again---Kelly, because she has a name---and for most of the night, it’s fine.

Until it passes around 10 and the pizza place fills with overly tipsy collegiates fresh off their power hour and Peter shifts, the all too familiar tingling at the base of his neck. He watches as Kelly and MJ stand near the soda fountains, grabbing them all refills. Peter doesn’t miss a couple of frat guys making eyes at her, but he’s never been much of a jealous type and MJ can handle herself. 

So he just watches.

“Hey,” One of the guys yells at her. “Columbia!”

Ah yes, creative. The hoodie she’s wearing proudly displays where she’s from. Ned doesn’t seem to notice, but Peter tenses; he sees MJ tilt her head a little but she doesn’t stop.

“Hey!” The guy calls again and he takes two long steps towards her and reaches out to grab her arm, about to spin her towards him. 

Peter’s up without another thought. He gets to her side just as MJ jerks away and scowls at the frat boy, stumbling back into Peter, who tucks her behind him. He hears her give an indignant huff, but it’s too late for him to calm down.

The guy grins at him. “You need something, kiddo? I was just trying to say hi to the pretty lady.”

“She’s fine.”

“ _She_ is right here, and _she_ can stand up for herself.” MJ pushes herself to stand beside him. “Peter---”

“Oh _yeah_!!” The guy lists to the side a little, then focuses back on Peter, a leery grin. “Peter Parker, right?” He turns back to where his friends are standing. “Guys, get a load of this, it’s Spiderman, in the flesh.” He turns back and steps closer to Peter, standing over him by a few inches. “You know, I always thought you’d be taller.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

“ _Peter_.”

“MJ, it’s fine. Let’s just go back to the table.”

She shoots him a look and he knows they’re gonna talk about it later. He turns to leave the guy behind, making sure he’s between MJ and the creep. Kelly is already back at the table, sitting with Ned, and Peter’s suddenly aware of everyone in that corner of the restaurant watching intently. His stomach swoops.

“ _Hey_.” Peter feels a hand on his wrist and he’s jerked back, catching his balance and turning to face the source. It’s the same guy, expression hardened into a glare. “I wasn’t finished.”

“You never even got started,” Peter snaps back, then exchanges a look with MJ, who has already climbed a couple of steps back to where their booth is. She’s looking down at both of them with veiled disdain. “Did you want to talk to him?”

Her gaze slides over him and his stomach swoops again. Oh, she is _mad_. She sniffs, narrowing her eyes. “No.”

Peter turns back, smiling a little. “See? She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“And who’s gonna stop me? You?”

Peter bristles. It doesn’t happen a lot. Peter thinks of himself as a pretty nice and laid back person but this guy is getting on his last nerve. Distantly, he realizes that this is no longer about MJ, but he doesn’t care and squares up in front of the guy, standing straighter, still a few inches short. 

“Sure. If that’s what you want.”

And there it is. Doubt flickers in the creep’s eyes and he flinches, just a little, one foot slipping back. He swallows hard, but Peter’s gaze doesn’t change; he knows he’s staring squarely up at the guy, inviting him to try whatever he’d like. 

“You’re an _idiot_.” MJ hisses behind him and he hears her approach. She grabs his arm and starts to drag him towards the front door. “We’re going. Now.”

Peter casts a look back at Ned and sees them leaving some money behind before following close behind, leaving the drunk asshole a little stunned. He stumbles after MJ, practically jogging to keep up and they’re a block away when she spins, eyes blazing. 

“What was that?!” She exclaims, crossing her arms over her chest. “Where in the hell did that macho neanderthal bullshit just come from?”

“He grabbed you, Michelle.”

She stops, spinning around to face him. “So? You don’t think I couldn’t have told him to fuck off on my own? You think _I_ can’t handle myself?”

“No, of course, I do.” Peter hurries to explain. “He was being creepy though, and I just…”

“Just what? Thought you’d let everyone know whose girlfriend I was?”

And that was...that was not what Peter was doing. He frowns, stepping back. “He followed you through the restaurant. I didn’t know what he was gonna do, what if he hurt you?”

She stares at him from a moment, not moving. Ned and Kelly are standing behind them, far enough to give them space, close enough that if either needed them they could step in. He waits for her to say something. After a few quiet seconds, she walks towards him, speaking gently. 

“I? I can take care of myself. You know I can.” She reaches out for his hand and takes it. “I appreciate you looking out for me and having my back. I know how the past year has been for you. But sometimes we just need to ignore them. Especially when it’s some drunk idiot that can barely stand up straight.”

The past year. Because it hasn’t just been Peter who’s had to deal with this. People have noticed the girl who hangs out with him all the time; they know who May Parker is, and Ned Leeds. They’ve all become targets, just like Pepper and Happy and Rhodey were for Tony; it’s why Clint’s family is still a secret from so many. 

“If you get hurt because of me, I am not…” Peter ducks his head. “I know we’re living life under a microscope now, I get it. But I can’t let that happen, MJ, not after everything over the past few years.”

She softens a little then, grabbing his other hand. “Hey. That is not what I mean. I just…” She peers at him from under a few curls that have fallen down into her eyes. “I know it’s been hard for you, everyone knowing who you are. I worry about you sometimes, Peter. I don’t want to give people ammunition, is all.”

They walk back to the dorm in relative quiet. By the time they go their separate ways---Ned stays with Kelly again--- there have already been multiple videos that have begun to trend on the Northeastern seaboard and they’re only growing, a clear account of Peter staring down some other college student with a hard gaze.

_“If that’s what you want.”_

The reactions are varied. There are plenty of people who are saying he’s done nothing wrong, but then there are people who are already calling him a bully, saying he knows that he’s stronger than the other guy, that he could do him real harm.

“Don’t read that garbage.” MJ says softly to him, taking his phone and tossing it towards the end of the bed. “It’s always the same, and no one ever knows what they’re talking about.”

He doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night, but he sleeps fitfully. MJ is up before him, and he wakes up to her offering him a cup of coffee and a bagel he grabbed from a corner store. They eat and they talk, and then they put a movie on until she has to catch her train. 

Both mute their phones and ignore the vibrations from texts and notifications.

“Maybe I should stay,” MJ says in the car on the way to the train station. “I have my laptop, I can email my professors and just let them know I have a family emergency…”

“Michelle, _no_ ,” Peter grabs her hand on the center console, giving it a squeeze. When they pull into the parking lot of the station a few minutes later, they sit in silence as he lifts their joined hands and kisses the heel of her palm. “I appreciate the offer but your midterms are next week and I know you’ve been a little stressed. It’ll be alright, I promise. This is all gonna die down, they won’t even remember it in a few days.”

“I don’t care about them, I care about _you_ ,” And she looks at him, eyes half-lidded and soft. 

“How about this,” Peter unlatches his belt, opening the door to climb out and grab her duffel from the trunk. “How about if I’m feeling stressed we jump on Hangouts or something so you can talk me down?”

Peter gives her a grin, the one he knows works best, the crooked one that makes his eyes crinkle at the edges and she rolls her eyes at him because she knows he knows that it works best. She walks over to him, out of the car by now herself, and grabs at her duffel as she leans into him for a kiss.

“I’ll tell Aunt May if you don’t.”

He walks her into the station, stopping for a soft pretzel on the way to the waiting area and sits down next to her, offering her half. They make small talk until it’s time for her to get up and get in line, ready to board, and when they can’t stall any longer, they stand. Peter grabs her pack off the floor as she gets her duffel and passes it off when her hands are free, helping her get situated.

She leans in and presses a kiss to his lips. “I’ll call you when I get to the city.”

He waits until the train has left the station, until the meal car turns the bend and is out of sight. Peter flips the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, shoulders bent as he skips and hurries back to his car. 

He sits there for a few quiet moments, flipping through his silenced notifications. A few calls from Pepper and Happy. A couple from May and a bunch of texts from a number of high school friends and acquaintances with words of support. Peter makes a note to call Pepper and May back later that night.

When he gets back to the dorms, he flops into bed, pulling his laptop over with him. He scrolls through Twitter and Instagram and Reddit a little bit before exiting out of them---he can’t seem to avoid coming across memes and discussions of that confrontation from the night before, or news on what the other Avengers are doing, or gossip and conspiracy theories about what _really_ happened with Thanos, and he isn’t in the mood.

Instead, he logs into the email client he’s been using to communicate with the Mechanic. He scrolls through their recent emails. Stuff about classwork but it’s gotten a bit more personal. The guy has mentioned he has that intern---it stood to reason, Peter figures, that he probably has a bunch of interns, depending on how large his company is---and he’s also mentioned a fiance once or twice that helps him run it, and how they’re slowly planning a wedding around work, which is always hard to juggle. 

Peter is almost positive this guy is probably way more well known than he’d believed in the beginning, at least in the circle’s Peter hopes to run in one day. 

_T,_

_This is gonna sound a little weird but… I get the impression whatever you do, people know about it. And you said you took it over from your dad so I was wondering like...did people always know, who you were? Even before you took over?_

_  
How did you deal with that? _

He gets a response later that afternoon, quicker than usual. 

_**You’re not wrong. You’d know who I was if I told you. Not to toot my horn, but I have a footprint. I’m not altogether opposed to letting you in on it either, at this point, you seem like a decent enough kid, but I was under the impression part of the assignment was the not knowing?** _

  
_No, I’m not asking for that. It’s just...did people know who you were, all your life then?_

_I have a bit of a reputation, I guess I could call it, myself. Enough that it just makes me feel like… I’m not **me** anymore. Sometimes I worry I don’t know who **me** is anymore, and I just...wondered if you had any tips on how to deal with that. _

Peter sends the email, inquisitive and pretty brief, and doesn’t really expect to hear anything back for about a week. Their emails so far have followed an even cadence, generally a volley of safe topics. Innocuous personal information had been shared---The Mechanic knew this wasn’t Peter’s first brush with mentorship, he knew Peter had a girlfriend in the city---but he’d never gotten any more vulnerable than that. He hopes he’s not getting ahead of himself, but every time the man drops a joke or his own personal anecdote, Peter can’t help but feel like they’re almost becoming something like friends. 

  
The guy, whoever he is, is smart but not in a stuffy way. He’s funny--or as funny someone can be in an email---but there’s an ease between the lines that Peter just doesn’t feel intimidated by.

To Peter’s surprise, his phone vibrates only an hour later. 

_**Pete,** _

_**People did. The company has always been decently successful. Established well before I was in the picture, so yeah, I was basically the...heir apparent. Especially when I was the only heir, apparently. So yeah, I went to school--young too, a few years shy of legal---knowing where I was headed.** _

_**As for a reputation...it’s not easy, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. But you just gotta...figure out who you are. Who you want to be. Or at least, who you want to let them think you are and stick with it. Own it, work it, and be confident. It’s way easier said than done but the first moment they see weakness, they’ll never back off.** _

_**You sure you’re okay, kid? I’m not gonna push but if you need anything, I’m okay with opening this up a little. I know how stressful school can be. Just say the word, we’ll figure it out.** _

_**Until next time---** _

_**T.** _

_No, I---_

Peter slumps in his desk chair with a sigh. He chews at his lip, eyeing the computer screen, before cracking his knuckles to relieve his nerves and starts again. 

_No, I do kind of like how things are with this. So I’m not asking for help, really, just advice? If you have it?_

_Just. How did you do it? You said...you mentioned the company that you took it over, it was your dad’s and you had to. Did you always know you’d have to? Did you ever think of just...not doing it? Doing your own thing? Instead of what everyone else expected you to become?_

_You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal. This just feels...so big, you know? This feels like a big decision and like I’m gonna disappoint people either way and it’s a lot._

_I’m probably being dumb. Sorry._

_Peter_

_**Peter,** _

  
  


_**So first off. You’re not dumb. It is a lot. And you’re not wrong, about me. It’s...complicated. I did doubt my future sometimes if I'm honest. But the thing was...I think that was because I’m not crazy about being told what to do. Because the truth is, what I do is what I’ve always wanted to do. Whether it’s because I was conditioned to do it or because I came to it on my own, I am never more at peace than when I’m building and fixing things. It grounds me. Gives me purpose.** _

_**Doesn’t mean your situation is the same though. Think about why you do it. Figure out if it’s because you want to and believe in it, and not because someone else is telling you that you should. It’s a very hard thing, to look at important people in your life and say, no I’m not gonna do something I don't love just because they want me to. Takes a lot of nerve. But, I think it’s worth it, in the end. If you don’t feel like the path you’re on is the right one. You only get one shot here, gotta do your best to do it well.** _

_**You’re not dumb, Peter. You’re just human. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Anytime you need to ask, though, I'm willing to lend an ear.** _

_**Hope you feel better soon kid.** _

_**-T** _

Peter slumps in his desk chair with a sigh. He chews at his lip, eyeing the computer screen, before cracking his knuckles to relieve his nerves and starts again. 

Peter reads the email a few times. Being outed has sucked this past year. The stress of what he does affects everyone in his life that cares about him. It puts them in danger, it makes Peter a danger to them, but Spiderman itself, Peter being Spiderman, making that decision has never been hard. Peter’s pretty sure it’s actually the easiest one he’s ever made.

_When you can do what I do, and you don’t and then the bad things happen...they happen because of you._

He remembers that day in his and May’s old apartment, and it feels like a lifetime ago. He was so scared of Tony Stark---of Iron Man, and getting busted, man oh man he was so sure he was about to get dragged to some jail cell or something. But then Tony challenged him; felt him out, asked him why. And no one else knew who he was, Tony was the first. And Peter hadn’t ever really considered _why_ he was doing what he was doing, it just felt right, felt like it was a part of who he was. That it was important. And he thinks of Ben, now, as he often does, and his chest aches.

_T-_

_Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I thought. It is who I am I think. Who I want to be. It’s just hard to remember that sometimes._

_Thanks for listening to me though. It means a lot. It’s been...a while since I’ve felt like I could spill like that. I think this whole email thing helps. So...thanks, Mechanic guy. Whoever you are. It really does help._

_Thank you._

_-Peter_


	2. Winter/Spring

* * *

Christmas break comes sooner than Peter expects.

May and Happy pick him up at the train station and bring him home. They’ve kept his room the same, so he throws a duffel on the bed and falls next to it with a sigh.

They’re going out to dinner with MJ’s mother and stepdad that night. Some small place in the city, nothing fancy. Her mom doesn’t really like Peter anymore---he guesses that’s an understatement because really---she’s outright said she doesn't like him, after everything that’s happened in the news with Spiderman. Peter has heard she and MJ argue about it when he’s been in their apartment, MJ’s mother unaware of how well he can actually hear through multiple walls. 

MJ’s mom was never a fan of Tony Stark either, or any of the Avengers, believing the violence that often followed them was caused by their mere presence and now….

Now MJ was within that orbit. Peter can’t even disagree with her.

Peter offers her a smile, her stepdad a nod, and he receives neither in return. MJ’s stepfather is too afraid of MJ’s mother, which Peter doesn’t altogether blame him for. She spends the dinner making somewhat passive-aggressive comments, heavily intimating that he’s not good enough to be with her daughter, which ends up leading to MJ telling her that they’re just gonna take a different Uber home. So, it’s a little bit of a disaster.

“I’m sorry,” She says with a sigh, closing the passenger door of their ride behind them as they pile in. “You don’t deserve to put up with that.”

“It’s fine,” He shrugs, looking out the window. “She’s not really wrong to feel that way. The whole thing is dangerous.”

“It’s not her decision either way,” MJ says back shortly. The silence fills the whole car, tension thick until she sighs and speaks again. "If you think she’s right, that you’re _dangerous_ , I mean, why do you even put up with this?”

He shifts, looking away from where his gaze was trained out the window. He considers her for a few quiet moments; she’s still looking away from him, still out the window at the passing streetlights and the water marks the snow is leaving on the windows. Without a word, he grabs her hand where it’s balled, clutching the straps of her clutch. 

“Because I love you. And I'll keep you safe.” He squeezes her hand. “And you’re worth me having to prove that to your mom every day. And I’ll do it. Be here, until you decide you’re tired of it.”

She watches him for a second, quiet. The driver hasn't said a word, bless his heart. MJ rolls her eyes and sighs, but he knows his comment has landed, by the way, the apples of her cheeks darken and her heart rate picks up.

She mutters, “You’re so dramatic,” and looks back out the window. 

May has been great about letting MJ stay over but they wouldn’t dare do anything more than spoon and make out a little. In the morning, she leaves to go hang out with her family and Peter goes over to his laptop when he’s still in his boxers and sleepshirt and checks his email.

**_We still on for tomorrow at noon?_ **

Peter grins. It’d been a weird sequence of events that had brought him and The Mechanic to this point. Somehow, they’d gotten from talking about Thanksgiving with their families and landed on this hole in the wall burger joint on the lower east side of Manhattan that they’d both been to before. It’s run by this old Greek guy and his family that had been in the States since the late ’60s. It wasn’t _clean_ by any means---Peter was 80% sure they were breaking all kinds of Health Department regulation, but they made a burger so good, he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

He types back a confirmation and closes the workstation before getting dressed for the day. Happy and May have waited for him to go get a tree, and they spend the day decorating and eating popcorn and watching terrible holiday movies---only the absolute worst and Peter loves it. 

The next day, Peter heads to the restaurant with a promise to May that he’ll be back in a couple of hours. He slides into a booth in the back and pulls out his phone, and he waits.

And he waits.

And he waits some more. Peter checks his email and then wonders why they didn’t exchange numbers. He just hadn’t thought of it, this guy has been so responsive. Every time the bell attached the door chimes, Peter looks up, hoping to find a guy in a black blazer walking through it but it never happens. And as the hours get further from the agreed-upon time, Peter’s disappointment grows. He ends up leaving as it gets closer to 4 in the afternoon and when May asks how the lunch went, he shrugs it off with a fine and shuts himself away in his room.

_**Kid,** _

_**I’m so sorry. Look, i haven’t been completely honest with my line of work for good reason. But sometimes there’s just stuff I gotta take care of that comes up last minute and this was one of those times. I am really sorry I missed you. I wish I would’ve had your number to let you know. Maybe we can do something over spring break?** _

_**I hope your Christmas holiday is going well. Best wishes to you & yours.** _

_**-T** _

Peter tries not to be mad but what the hell? In this day and age, who can’t send off a simple message to let someone know you have to cancel? To let them hang out waiting at a restaurant is, at best, really shitty and at it’s worst, really fucking rude. It’s a complete lack of respect for another person’s time and Peter understands emergencies. He’s been the king of bailing on people at the last minute but he almost always tries to have KAREN send some kind of note with his apologies. 

It’s not like this guy is flying off to save the world or something.

Frowning, he types out a brief, clipped response, telling the man it’s no big deal and sends it off.

It won’t be, after a few weeks. Peter reminds himself. This isn’t like it’s Ned or Pepper or Happy blowing him off, it’s not someone who really matters. If they maintain their emails, great but...what does he lose, if it falls off after this? It might be disappointing but in a few years, the Mechanic would be nothing but a memory. 

Maybe that’s just how it was supposed to be.

* * *

MIT and Columbia’s spring break’s align.

Peter originally plans on staying back at May and Happy’s place, but when Pepper finds out he and MJ will be out around the same time, she offers them the Stark penthouse-still in the family. She likes to keep it, she tells him, in case she has business in the city. There are two rooms, a large living space and a state of the art kitchen. The space had been purchased by Howard shortly after the war, and it had been the home he and Maria brought Tony home to the summer after he was born. Peter thinks that’s probably part of why Pepper still has it, too.

It’s..amazing. Peter has grown accustomed to being a little spoiled, having been through the two years he spent under Tony’s wing. But he’s never really lived it, and the fact that the suite is bigger than he and May’s old apartment does not escape him.

It’s overlooking Central Park, a wrap-around view of it, and the MET. They spend their first few days in, taking it easy and enjoying each other’s company. Halfway through the week, they wake up lazy and slow, MJ curled on his chest, the morning sun warming them where it cuts through the curtains.

He considers getting breakfast. It’s easy enough, there’s a really great crepe place around the corner. He can get MJ some coffee, some OJ and a bagel for himself, he can get it _delivered_ …

“I have to tell you something.”

MJ’s sleep soft voice stops his thoughts in midstream. ‘I have to tell you something’ is just ‘ _We need to talk_ ’ but almost worse because there’s an unexpressed warning there. Generally, in Peter’s experience, it’s not really something you’re gonna like. 

He cranes his neck to look down at her. Her eyes are looking up from where her chin is resting on his chest, her front teeth worrying at her lip and the pit in his stomach widens. 

“Well, good morning to you too.”

She sighs, heavy and resigned, pulling herself to sit up. She tugs at the strap of her bralette, sitting up straight and bunching the sheets in her lap as she leans back against her own pillows. He pushes himself up as well and waits, quiet.

“I...I heard back about one of the internships I applied for. You remember, the ones I told you about over Christmas? For the summer?”

He frowns a little. “Yeah. You said there were a couple you submitted applications for.”

“More than a couple. Pretty much anyone I could. Not all the outlets accept them from first years.” She picks at the sheets. “But um, I actually got accepted for one of them, in their editorial department. It’s for International News stuff, I’d be getting coffee and running errands but I think I might make some connections and even get a chance to maybe write something? If I made a good enough impression? I just think it could be a good experience. It’s over the summer…”

Peter watches as she twists her hands over and over, growing increasingly confused. This sounds perfect, really---they’re gonna be in the city anyway and he expects he’ll be patrolling more so it’s not like it’ll take away from the time they can spend together. 

“MJ, that’s awesome. Is that all you were worried about? That it’s this summer, because I was even planning on taking---”

“It’s at the Bugle, Peter.”

It stops him in mid-sentence. Peter’s stunned first---MJ has always been right there with him, if not the one leading the diatribe about J.J. Jameson---but then a hint of...betrayal begins to set in. His fists curl in the sheets.

“ _What??_ ” He rasps.

“I didn’t think I’d get it.” MJ rushes. “I honestly didn’t think I'd get any of them, I didn’t think I'd even hear back from them. I was just...my advisor told me that internships like that look really good on resumes, the earlier the better, so I sent some essay samples, and they offered me a summer internship.”

“At the _Bugle_?” Peter spits out. “You would be working for...for…”

“I know,” She says softly. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it.” She pauses, fiddling with a piece of lint on the quilt over top of them then shrugs. “And I wouldn’t, really. Be working for him. He’s not involved in the International office at all…”

Peter’s eyes widen. He cannot believe she’s actually...his mouth drops. “Oh my god. Oh my god, did you already accept it?”

MJ’s eyes shoot open, her head turning swiftly to look at him. “No! No, I wouldn’t…” She shakes her head, then repeats herself. “I wanted to talk to you about it.”

But she wants to, he knows it. “Kinda sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

“That’s not fair,” She begins. She opens her mouth to continue but Peter is already ahead of her.

“That asshole unmasked me to the entire world, Michelle!” Peter is out of the bed now, standing in only his boxers, gesturing out the window. “In the middle of New York City, and he _lied_ about it. He called me a murderer, my life for an entire year was miserable!”

“I know, I was there.” She snaps back at him.

“And now you want to work for him?”

“It’s not for him!”

“But it’s with him! It’s at the same place, at a place that would keep someone like that around. Is that really what you want to be associated with? Some trash piece of garbage just to get a line on a resume that isn’t even gonna matter in 4 years?” He shakes his head. “How do you know this isn’t just Jameson trying to get more information about Spiderman?”

Peter knew he was going too far. He has a right to be upset, he believes that. He knows MJ knew it too or else she would’ve just taken the job and not brought it up, but he’s being mean now. Her expression hardens. 

“So this is about you now? What, so my writing is just shit and I can’t earn stuff on my own?” She shakes her head with a scoff. “Not all of us had a billionaire for a best friend, Peter. Some of us have to make choices that aren’t exactly ideal to get to where we want to be.”

“Don’t bring Tony into this,” He replies coolly. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“He had _everything_ to do with everything, Peter!” She waves her arms, now out of the bed herself, grabbing at a pair of jeans. “We’re staying in his fucking penthouse playing house for a week.” She shakes her head, pulling on her pants. “And it’s not a bad thing. Tony was a great guy, and I hate...I _hate_ that he’s gone and that you had to go through that but I just don’t think you realize what it’s like for normal people.”   
  


He stiffens. “Normal, people, huh? So not people like me. Abnormal? Different?” He pauses for effect. “Freaks?”

She sighs. “That is not what I meant and you know it. I shouldn’t have said it like that, I’m sorry.”

“You think this is what I want either? My entire life is planned out for me already. There’s no choice here.”

“You always have a choice, Peter,” She says tiredly. She pulls on a shirt and grabs her bag by the door. “Look, I just...I think we’re both kind of keyed up right now, so I’m gonna...go for a walk. I told Betty we’d do lunch today anyway, so maybe it’s best if we just...spend the day apart. I don’t know.”

“Are you gonna take it?"

She stops with her hand on the door to the penthouse. She pauses, rubs at her forehead. “I don’t...I don’t know.” She shrugs, shaking her head miserably. “I’ll be back in time for dinner. We can pick this back up later.”

Peter watches her go, a pit opening in his stomach. He’s angry at her but the idea of her leaving almost makes him sick. It is probably best, really, that they both get some air. Take some time, simmer down, and think through things. He remembers her mentioning lunch with Betty, so he knows it’s not just an excuse to get away with him, so he forces himself to sit down and try and occupy his brain with something else.

He plays some video games. He surfs the web mindlessly before landing in his school account, skimming through upcoming assignments, making sure he’s on track for all his tasks. After that is all done, he figures he’ll check the account he’s created only for the emails with the Mechanic, and he’s a little surprised to find something, unprompted. Even maybe a little relieved.

_**Hey kid,** _

_**Figured I’d check-in, it’s been a few weeks since we’ve talked. How’s your break going? That’s this week right?** _

_**Everything on this end is crazy or else I’d have reached out sooner. Let me tell you if you ever decide to get married, elope. This planning is insane, we can’t even nail down a date. The missus wants an October wedding, but I told her, it’s gonna be cold, and kids are gonna be in school so people won’t be able to travel, there’s gonna be work stuff. I’ve almost gotten her to agree to August. Honestly, it's worse than any merger I've ever had to deal with.** _

_**Speaking of---maybe if we get a chance to meet face to face before then you and your girlfriend can come. I’ll keep you posted if you’re interested. Hope the spring break is going well and you guys are having a good time. Let me know!** _

_**-T** _

  
  
  
  


_T,_

_If I have a girlfriend by August. We um...we’ve been staying together over the break and we kind of had a fight this morning. It wasn’t great._

_I’ll let you know about August. School is out in the middle of May and I’ll be back in the city for a longer stay. Maybe we can give the East Village another shot._

_**So what’d you do?** _

Peter’s eyes bulge out of his head. He frowns, shaking his head, and pushes up his sleeves, ready to write.

_**I** didn’t do anything. She has this opportunity for an internship with this...terrible company. There’s a guy who works for them, he’s awful and I told her that she shouldn’t want to be associated with it. The guy is a complete jerk---I’ve had a few run-ins with him, he’s a dick to me and has honestly made my life hell and she knows it. She hates him too. _

_**So, she’d be working for this guy?** _

_Well, no. But it’s for the same company. A company that makes money off of the lies he shills. All he cares about are how many clicks his website gets._

**Ah. he’s a reporter.**

_He’s not a reporter, he’s a con artist. She wants to be a journalist. And she’ll be a great one. But the Bugle is a hack paper, and she deserves better. _

_**The Bugle, eh? I’ve never heard of it.** _

__

Peter’s mouth twists at the odd question. Sure, The Bugle had started off as some bottom-feeding trashy internet column buried in the dregs of the internet before the Snap, but sometime in the interim, the Daily News had needed something more entertaining and they’d brought Jonah’s vlog mainstream. It was everywhere---if the Mechanic was famous enough to be known worldwide, it was interesting to Peter that he wasn’t in the know.

_It’s a glorified tabloid, but it’s everywhere. And I know it’s important to get experience but...I just wish she could have gotten it anywhere else._

_**Well, I’m sorry buddy, that kind of sucks that she didn’t take your feelings into consideration before accepting it.** _

_Well, she didn’t accept it yet. But she’s thinking about it._

_**Wait,** _

_**So she didn’t accept it. And she brought it up to you to talk about, so she wanted your opinion on it. So what’s the problem? You’ve told her how you feel, and I assume she did the same, and now you can talk it through and she can consider it.** _

_But that’s the problem, that she’s even considering it. I just wish she understood how terrible this guy is._

_**So let me make sure this is straight. She hasn’t taken the internship, she doesn’t know if she wants to, but she knew that you weren’t going to be completely happy about it so she brought it up. You guys had an argument---what did she have to say?** _

_She said…_

God, what had she said? Peter’s heart thumps against his sternum and he swallows hard, wracking his brain. 

_She said we’d pick it back up later._

_**Oh. Oh good. That’s good, then. Mostly. As long as you didn’t get only an “I just don’t know,” then you’re probably good.** _

_**So here’s the thing.** _

_**You gotta listen to her, kid. She came to you first. Whether in her heart of hearts she wants to do this, despite her apparent dislike for a guy that works there, she came to you. Because she wants to know what you think and what you want. And I think….if you care about her and if you trust her, doesn’t she at least deserve that?** _

  
  


Peter frowns. 

_So I ignore that she’s even considering it in the first place? After she knows how miserable this guy has been to me?_

_**Do you want to stay in a relationship with her? Because you can be stubborn and feel like you’re right or you can stay with her, but you might not be able to do both.** _

_**In the end, it doesn’t matter, as long as you believe her, and you trust her and you love her** **  
****  
****Do you love her, Peter?** _

Peter stares at the email, mouth going dry.

_Do you love her, Peter?_

Does he...love her? Of course he loves her, they’ve said it to each other countless times over the past two years, ever since they got back from Europe, even when times weren’t always the greatest. Peter thinks about now, plainly, in those terms, does he _love her_ , almost insulted the guy would even ask him that.

He thinks about how he she talks to herself under her breath when she cooks, and how she hums when she cleans and how she play with his hair when they’re laying in bed, sleep drunk and cuddled under blankets and how she smells sweet and clean, and how she laughs at him when he says something really, really dumb, just to hear her laugh and he thinks….

Yeah. That one is easy. Yeah, he loves her. It’s been said, but if there’s anything the Snap taught him, it’s that you have to say it always and often, you have to make sure they know and so he thinks yeah, he **loves** her, and he knows, without even replying to The Mechanic, what he has to do now. 

_Yeah. Yeah, I do._

He hits send.

Peter, surprisingly, only has to wait a few moments for a response.

_**Well, then. I think you know what you have to do.** _

\-----------

MJ gets back around 7. Peter has a pizza waiting from her favorite place in the oven to keep warm and presents her with a Moleskine and a brand new fountain pen and tells her he’ll support her, whatever she wants to do. 

MJ tells him she’s already turned it down. That he was right about not wanting to work for a place like that. That there will be other opportunities. 

He tells her he loves her. Like, really loves her. And that that’ll never change, no matter who she works for.

They head to bed early, and the pizza remains on the counter, untouched.

* * *

_So. I kind of mentioned that you’ve been really helping me through the last few months to my girlfriend and she thinks I’m being dumb about being worried and thinks we should try and meet again. My summer break starts in late May. I usually spend Memorial Day at my old boss's lakehouse, so anytime after that would work. If you’re up for it and free, we should meet in Manhattan somewhere. I’ll be staying in Queens. Again. Let me know what your schedule looks like. And send me your number. This time, we won’t miss it._


	3. Spring

A week goes by.

Peter doesn’t really think about it too much. A week, even two, it’s not all that crazy to not hear from the guy, especially when he told him he was busy with that wedding stuff. As it stretches towards early May, though, Peter starts to get nervous.

He’d thought they were doing pretty well. 

Peter considers writing once more, a kind of “hey did you get this” type thing, but he worries it’ll be a little desperate, a little clingy, a little too much of what the guy was probably trying to avoid with all the anonymity so he holds off. Maybe Peter spooked him. Maybe Christmas wasn’t really a mistake and now that Peter is broaching the idea of them meeting up in real life, maybe the Mechanic is done. 

He decides whatever it is, it is. It’s rude and it hurts a little, that the guy would be so dismissive after the last 6 months. Peter had thought they’d become kind of friends, but he supposes that internet acquaintances are probably just like that sometimes. He hopes nothing has gone wrong, but he assumes he’d have heard if some predominant engineer with a “modest but successful” company had died close around Manhattan.

He gets his answer. He just has to wait a few more weeks.

Peter perks up when he sees the new message from the guy. He gets the notification on his phone, in between classes, but since its finals week he decides to wait until he’s done for the day to read it and answer. He only has a week or so until Memorial Day so maybe it just took a while for the guy to pin a date down for when he would be free or something.

He’s not expecting what he gets.

_**Peter,** _

_**I don’t even know if you’re still out there. I haven’t heard from you since...since everything happened, and I can’t help but think the worst, considering how everything else has gone.** _

_**I can’t...explain. Not really. I just felt like in the off chance you are still around, you deserve at least this. This is...it’s kind of my fault, and I just don’t think I can keep doing this. Letting people down, failing when things have to go right. It’s not what I'm used to, and it damn sure isn’t what people around me deserve so...this is goodbye kid, I’m done. I’m signing off for good, I'm shutting down this client and a bunch of my other stuff. After the past few weeks, the best I can do---for myself, for my fiancée---is a clean slate. A new start. It’s just...the way it has to be.** _

_**I hope you’re out there still, kid. I wish you nothing but the best. Take care of yourself.** _

_**-T.** _

Peter reads it once, twice, three times, mouth hanging open just a little. It seems excessive in a way he’s not sure he understands. 

Disaster’s aren’t uncommon in this day and age; the aftermath of Thanos and the Snaps, they’ve introduced even more chaos to the world. But Peter’s pretty sure he’d have heard of something like what the Mechanic is alluding to, probably would have even been called in on it. He frowns, then skims the email again before opening another tab and searching for Avenger’s sightings in the past couple of weeks. 

He gets a few hits, one a particularly large scuffle in Italy near one of the coasts that took out a couple of yachts and did some pretty wicked property damage but all in all, nothing that’s amounted to an incredible loss of life. Still confused, but pretty much at a loss, he closes out of the browser and leaves it alone.

He’ll ping some of the others, Peter decides. Bucky and Sam are in Eastern Europe putting down some Hydra loyalist upstarts, and T’Challa always seems to have an awareness of what’s going on in the Southern Hemisphere. And, lord knows, Bruce needs a reason to get out of the lab.

Peter finishes finals week strong. He’s pretty confident that he’s gonna pull A’s in almost every course, but he knows this is just his freshman year and stuff is only going to get harder from here. He and Ned spend the weekend packing up their dorm. Ned’s gonna head back Sunday, but the dorms aren’t kicking them out until the end of the next week, so Peter’s decided to hang out for a couple of days and just stop by Pepper and Morgan’s on the way home for the Memorial Day party they have every year. 

The first one was kind of a coincidence. Tony’s birthday fell within a couple of days of it and Rhodey hadn’t wanted Pepper to be alone. Happy had joined in, then Peter, and then…

Everyone had shown up. Happy had manned the grill, Rhodes had helped organize and Peter had spread the word. This led to any of the Avengers who were on the planet to stop in for a visit, mostly with an assist from Dr. Strange. Peter wasn’t crazy about that part---he didn’t know if he’d ever forgiven the man for the part he’d played in what happened to Tony---but it had been good to see everyone, and it had evolved into a tradition.

The plan is for him to arrive Thursday afternoon. Morgan’s been away at some sleepaway camp for the two weeks since her school ended, so Pepper’s been alone. Happy and May have agreed to pick her up on their way up from the city, and Peter’s looking forward to spending some time one on one with Pepper, having dinner and helping her prepare for all the people who will be over this weekend.

The home is quiet when he arrives later that week. It’s not surprising, it’s only her and that alpaca Tony brought home one day without warning her. Peter has cried-laughing at her telling the story, more than once, about how she walked out onto the porch to find a horse trailer backing up on their property and Tony’s hand on a lead, a bashful look on his face.

“They were gonna euthanize the poor guy, I had to honey!”

Peter parks the car and doesn’t bother grabbing his bag right then. He skips quickly up to the porch with a hello to Gerald, grazing in the front yard, and hurries around the wrap-around patio to the back of the home where he knows he’ll find her, working in the garden. She’s already standing when he gets there and he throws himself at her, wrapping her in a hug. 

Pepper laughs at him. “I heard you pull up, oh my god, I’m so happy to see you!” She steps back, pulling off her gloves and grabs his arms, taking him in. “God, it feels like forever.”

“Since Christmas.” He reminds her, which is a really long time considering he’s been back to the city since then and he could have tried to stop by, if not for time. “How are you?”

“I’m good.” She smiles wide. “Enjoying the quiet.” She picks up a pile of greens, lifting them into his eyeline. “Got some fresh asparagus and lettuce for tonight, if you’re up for a salad with the tenderloin?”

“Always.”

“Alright, then, let’s get inside so I can get cleaned up and you can tell me all about your last week!”

Peter cleans the vegetables while Pepper goes upstairs to shower. He straightens up where he can, but the kitchen is already pretty immaculate. He passes by a few photos standing up on corner shelves near a window over the sink and he smiles when his eye catches the old one from his days of the internship, the two of them goofing around with the certificate in his hands.

“Thank you for cleaning up, I really appreciate it,” Pepper says from behind him. Peter turns to find her standing a few feet behind him, staring wistfully at the frame in his hand. “I need to hang that up in the living room. I’ve been meaning to reorganize everything.”

“I like it here. It’s kinda nice having photos of him all around the house.” He smiles sheepishly. “A Tony for every room.”

She snorts a laugh at that. “Just how he’d have liked it.” She smiles and takes the photo, staring at it for a few quiet moments before her mouth relaxes a bit. He watches her throat bob as she swallows, blinking a few times before straightening up and returning the frame to its spot on the shelf above the sink.

When she turns around, she’s smiling again, sharing a knowing look with Peter that doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. He doesn’t think the ache will ever go away completely. He thinks he would feel guilty if it did. But the further away from that day at the Compound they get, a feeling of fondness has risen up to match the grief. They were lucky to have Tony for the time they did and he wants to remember that too.

Peter tries to help as Pepper pulls the meat out to sit for a bit before it goes in the oven, but she bats his hand away and forces him to sit and relax. He humors her and does as directed, knowing she likes to fuss a little over him, especially when they haven’t seen each other in so long. 

He fills her in on his finals and she nods along as he tells her how MJ and Ned are doing. He talks a little about what their plans for the summer are---a road trip to Philly and maybe a couple of beach weekends to a place in Montauk that Pepper has offered when he would like---and he asks about Morgan and how her first long week away has been for her and for her mom.

Pepper blushes a little. “I’m fine. The quiet is kind of nice. It did get to me a little over this past weekend, but it was kind of nice to sit outside at night and have a glass of wine, stare at the stars…” She smiles wistfully and goes back to chopping up the fresh lettuce she’d harvested earlier and shakes her head a little, and Peter wonders what she’s thinking of.

“So, hey,” She finally says, pausing to look up at him, the wrist bending so the knife lazily points at him. “Aren’t you supposed to meet up with that guy next week when you get back to the city? The email guy, from your class? MJ mentioned that you guys were hoping to do that once the semester ended.”

Peter shifts, frowning as he folds his arms in front of him. “Uh, no. That got…” Peter shakes his head. “I don’t think he and I are gonna be talking anymore. I think something kind of bad might have happened to him. I was gonna give him some time. I might try again down the road but he said he wasn’t gonna use the account anymore so…” He trails off with a shrug. “Yeah, I don’t know.”

Pepper frowns back, the skin between her eyes crinkling. “That sounds weird. He didn’t tell you why?"

Peter shakes his head. “Just said that ‘ _with everything that happened_ ’ which...I don’t even know what that means but I’m not sure what I can do about it.” He looks down where his feet are resting on the bottom rung of the stool and starts to kick at it softly with his toe. “I liked him too. It just kind of sucks.”

“That does suck. I’m really sorry to hear it, Pete.” She starts chopping again and is busy transferring the pieces into a huge, wooden bowl when she adds, casually, “You know, Tony volunteered for something like that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Actually,” She laughs, using the wooden utensils to mix the salad. “He signed up for it the fall after you guys really started working together.” Pepper shakes her head, laughing more as she continues. “Oh my god, he was so worried he was gonna do something wrong. You guys kept hitting these speedbumps and I kept trying to explain like, yeah, honey, that’s how building relationships with people works but he…” She shakes her head again, more sad this time. “He wanted to be the best for you.” She pauses, and she stops mixing the salad, sighing a little heavy. 

“He did a good job,” Peter offers weakly in an attempt to head off the cloud of sorrow that’s drifting towards them. Pepper smiles but it’s not the same one she just had on her face and she shrugs. 

“Oh, I know. I think he knew, too. I just…” She stares off into the distance into the kitchen, face setting into a frown. “I just wish you both would have had more time together, after. You know?”

Peter _does_ know. He thinks about it at least a few times a week, if not more. Tony is still everywhere---murals all over every city, statues in municipalities and on the MIT campus itself. Peter’s just happy they haven’t confronted him yet for some kind of exposé for the school paper.

“So whatever happened then? To the kid he was emailing?”

Pepper’s face drew more blank. “You know, I don’t even know. When Tony came back from Titan, he was….” She shakes her head. “I’ve told you. It was bad. And I think, after you and everyone else he just…” She stood back, dropping the tongs in the bowl, crossing her arms over her chest and eyes on the ceiling, thinking. “He said, and I remember it so clearly, I’m done. Clean slate.” She swallows hard. “I mean, he'd been gone for 3 weeks after the first Snap. He didn't have an email from the guy checking in, so he assumed he’d been snapped too.”

The hair on the back of Peter’s neck prickles. _Clean slate._

“Did you guys never look him up? Never check?”

“He didn’t know who the kid was---both of them apparently liked it being a secret. Tony thought he might have had a record or something and that he didn’t want Tony looking that up.” She shrugs. “I think his name might have been Peter too.” Her mouth presses in a line. “I don’t think that helped.”

Peter feels his heart slamming against his sternum, the prickly feeling at the back of his neck making him shiver. It’s getting worse, the sensation of _this is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong_ but he can’t put his finger on it, not quite---it’s like a shadow, just out of his reach, a truth he knows on the tip of his tongue that he can’t conjure to life.

“So they didn’t meet? Did they have plans to…?”

“They were supposed to, once, over Christmas before everything happened.” She shakes her head. “I think that stuck with him for a while too, the disappointment and the guilt. He’d gotten called out for some Avengers related emergency and was late, he felt terrible about it, especially after everything happened. Missed the kid at that old crappy Greek place that’s down on the Lower East Side...Krysoulas?” She peers at him, tilting her head. “Didn’t you guys go there a few times?”

“I…” Peter feels like the Earth below him is about to open up and bury him at once. It’s suddenly hot, too hot, in the kitchen and he presses his palms against the cool granite of the countertop. He swallows hard, trying to keep the spinning feeling in his stomach from spiraling out of control.

Pepper stops mixing the greens, looking at him with concern. “Peter, are you alright? You look a little…”

“Yeah, I’m….yeah. I just...I forgot, all this talk about emails, I forgot I have to get an email off to one of my professors for a summer class I'm taking online. Um,” He clears his throat, jumping to his feet. “Is it alright if I run up real quick and shoot that off? I promise I’ll be right back down in time to eat.”

“Of course,” She says warily, concern still clear. “You got about 15 minutes, but hurry back if you can. I don’t want it getting cold.”

He nods without another word, hurrying towards the stairs. Peter takes the steps two at a time, his mind suddenly reeling with all the emails he’s exchanged with this alumni guy over the past 8 months, and he cannot help but wonder, he cannot help but think---

“It’s impossible. You’re crazy.” Peter’s mumbling as he stumbles into his room, closing the door so it’s open only a sliver. He slips into a chair in front of a desk at the far end of the room, grabbing his laptop from the backpack resting beside it.

He logs in and immediately goes to the account he’s been using to email back and forth with the Mechanic. He starts to scroll through the dozens of messages exchanged---he first selects the final email he received from the guy, popping it open in a separate window, skimming over it. 

_**“I haven’t heard from you since...since everything happened, and I can’t help but think the worst, considering how everything else has gone.”** _

Peter’s mind is keeping time with his heart, jumping to a different thought with every beat. The email had been cryptic when he’d first gotten it; he hadn't known what the man had meant by “everything happened”, the implication that something terrible had occurred to Peter specifically had made even less sense, unless....

He’s trying to stay calm. Stay rational, because this...there’s no logical or scientific explanation for this but then again, there shouldn’t have been any explanation for Thanos or super soldiers or super powered aliens from other realms and yet here they were. The power of the universe worked in mysterious ways, all he had to do was visit Stephen Strange to get a lecture on that, how energies could be manipulated to do extraordinary things so Peter couldn’t help but think that _maybe_...

Peter chokes on air, trying to breath as he backtracks, scrolls, clicks on another, scanning the contents.

**_“...the missus wants an October wedding, but I told her, it’s gonna be cold, and kids are gonna be in school so people won’t be able to travel, there’s gonna be work stuff. I’ve almost gotten her to agree to August…”_ **

August 27th. The original date of the wedding had been August 27th. Tony had talked to Peter about being a groomsman, had already arranged for him to get his measurements done and the tux ordered, had even sprung for a suite for Peter to share with May the weekend of the festivities. Pepper and Tony insisted on covering their flights, any costs associated with the trip, and Peter had never even been to a wedding before, and the idea he got to be a _groomsman_ for Tony Stark was almost too much. 

It had never happened, of course. They’d apparently still had the service, Peter’s seen photos, but it hadn’t been as joyous of an occasion as either of them had deserved. 

Frantically, Peter backs out, filters through his inbox, and he starts to think. He clicks on another.

**_"I haven't been completely honest with my line of work for good reason. But sometimes there’s just stuff I gotta take care of that comes up last minute and this was one of those times."_ **

And again. 

**_"Think about why you do it. Figure out if it’s because you want to and believe in it, and not because someone else is telling you that you should."_ **

And again.

**_"I have this...intern, kid. He’s like...he’s smart. Whip-smart, super nerdy, but he’s a nice, good kid. I like him. You’d probably like him, same cloth and all that but I just...sometimes I feel like I'm missing something. We had a bit of a rough patch when he started off last year, but we’ve been doing better..."_ **

Peter’s crying now, little tracks for one or two tears that have been slipping out. Peter’s faced so many crazy things in the past few years of his life, so rationally he can’t excuse this but the idea that he’s somehow been communicating with a past Tony Stark is so fantastical that he can barely get his head around it.

He pushes away from the desk and gets up, starting to pace, unable to stop the barrage of thoughts racing around his mind. Every time something seemed weird, or unclear, now everytime the guy said something that Peter couldn’t quite understand, his brain threw him a scenario that made it make sense..

Like not knowing what the Bugle was. Or like Christmas.

The Mechanic hadn’t shown up that couple of days before Christmas---not because of a last minute emergency, not because he didn’t want to see Peter but...

Because he was _fucking dead._

Peter’s lungs feel like they’re collapsing. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if he can’t get a hold of this but somehow, he stumbles back towards the chair where his laptop is sitting and slides into it.

God, he’s gonna sound like an absolute lunatic. He only has a few minutes before he has to be back downstairs, so there’s no way this will be coherent but he starts typing anyway.

_Tony---_

_This is Tony, right, Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark, it’s Peter, it’s me, it’s Peter Parker. I don’t know how, I don’t **understand** how this is happening but it’s me, and I think it’s you. _

_My name is Peter Parker. I’m Spider-Man and you saved me, you save all of us but you have to listen to me. I’m writing to you from 2026, but something went wrong when you brought us all back. You and everyone else, you figure out how to get the Stones back but something goes **wrong**. Thanos figures out how to come back and you have to use the gauntlet. You have to figure out how to use it without it killing someone, **please** Mr. Stark. Please. I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out earlier than this but please, Mr. Stark, please just...don't do it if you can’t survive it. Please don’t die. _

He shoots it off. He waits. Peter folds his hands in front of his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. He presses his fists to his mouth, holding back sobs, praying to anything that might be listening. 

There’s no response. There’s nothing.

God, he’s too late. He was too late, and he missed it.

F.R.I.D.A.Y calls to him from above. “Peter, Mrs. Stark asked that I tell you that dinner is ready---”

“Tell her I’ll be down in a minute, FRI, I just...I need a minute!”

He stares at the computer screen, rubbing at his face, willing there to be a response. The number next to his inbox stays at “0”. Peter knows it’s irrational to expect an immediate response but Tony always had his phone on him. If it was Tony, a Tony in the past where the Snap hadn’t been undone and he saw that this was _Peter_ , he’d answer right away. 

But he’d said in his last email that he was done, that he was closing down the client. And maybe he had meant it.

Peter presses his hands onto the desk and drops his head to press against them, squeezing his eyes shut, hoping when he looks up it’ll be different. Outside, a tree branch scrapes across the window as the wind blows. 

“Please…” He begs in a whisper, not even willing to consider what this would even _mean_. They’d studied time travel after the second Snap, and they knew, things that changed in the past wouldn’t change your present. “ _Please_.”

This Tony. It felt wrong, almost like he was cheating, but if this Tony made it, then maybe the connection would stay. Maybe they could...stay, friends, maybe they could catch up, hell maybe they could figure out how to _visit_ each other----

His heart aches.

So he has to at least try.

He hears as Pepper begins to climb the stairs, and feels a pang of guilt. She’s worked hard to get dinner together. He hasn’t been to visit since the beginning of the semester and with Morgan being at camp he knows she’s been lonely out here by herself. He grips the desk, forcing himself to look up at the browser and face---

Nothing. No new email. No response. 

Peter swallows a sob. He pushes it down, all the disappointment and hope and anger and guilt and rolls away from the desk just as he hears Pepper at the door. He stands up from the chair, preparing an apology as he moves.

“This is crazy,” He whispers to himself, closing his eyes before he turns, trying to calm himself down, and convince himself that this isn’t what he thinks it is. Pepper will know if he’s frazzled, she’ll ask why and he just wants to drop it. There’s nothing else he can do. “I’m going actually crazy. There is no way…”

“You’re not crazy, kid.”

It takes a moment or two to register. The voice is older, gruffer, he hasn’t heard it in years, but Peter recognizes soon enough that it’s not Pepper who has come to fetch him for supper. 

He doesn’t make a sound, the excuse for the delay dying in his throat. Peter turns and it’s **_Tony_** standing there, a small, sad smile on his face, leaning against the door as his arms cross, one flesh, one of some indeterminable alloy. There’s scarring and puckering of the skin all up the right side of his face, but it looks like it’s healed. 

“Heya, Pete. I got your email.”

Peter’s face crumples. 

Tony crosses the room in two strides as Peter sinks onto the floor, covering his face. He pulls away, curling into himself tighter, shaking his head.

“You’re not real, this can’t be _real_ ….”

“Peter. Peter, listen to me,” Tony’s voice is soft and patient and kind, an unending gentleness that lacks any surprise. “It’s not an illusion thing. It’s not any of that. I’m real. I got your email.”

“But it...it can’t change the present, you can’t be _here_.” Peter stares at him as Tony reaches out to him with the prosthetic arm, finger’s extended and Peter is suddenly back in Berlin, in the middle of Quentin Beck’s illusion, the virtual graveyard, and he presses himself further into the wall, grabbing at his head with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re not real, it can’t be.”

“Peter, it’s alright.” Tony’s voice is gentle. He’s crouching, and Peter notices him wince as he tries to keep all his weight on his left leg. “It’s real, Peter. I promise, it’s real.”

Peter chances a cautious look up, peeking up through the hair that’s fallen in front of his face. Tony--- _Tony_ \---is squatting in front of him, hand pressed to the floor, a soft expression on his face. His hair is spattered with grey and white---Peter remembers that, from the Compound battlefield when Tony had found him. He remembers how Dr. Strange had mentioned it had been five years but he hadn’t expected Mr. Stark to look so old, how he’d only really kind of started to believe what Strange had said then, especially when Mr. Stark had pulled him in tightly for a hug. 

The scarring is healed, though it’s pink and knotted, stretching the skin towards the side of his face. His right ear is a prosthetic, just like the arm extended towards him. This isn’t the way he’s dreamed of Mr. Stark in the past. Mr. Stark was always put together---nice jackets and expensive jeans, cologne, fancy glasses. The dreams he had were of him and Mr. Stark in a lab, or at the Compound. It was never in this room or even this house, where the two of them had never had the chance to spend any time together at all. 

“But it’s not how time travel works, though,” Peter grinds out, repeating himself though now it’s tinged with uncertainty. “Changing the past can’t change my present, you can’t be here.”

“I know what I explained to literally everyone else, so I don’t know how this is happening but it is, and I gotta tell you, Pete, I don’t really care to question it,” Tony says softly. “We need to talk more, but what we really need to do is get downstairs for dinner before my wife comes up here and yells at the both of us.”

Dinner. Right, Pepper had made him dinner.

Wait, how was…

“For her, I’ve never been gone,” Tony explains softly, catching onto his confusion. “Come downstairs. Keep it together over the meal and then we’ll escape to the lab. We can talk more there.”

Peter stays still for a few moments, then slowly nods. Tony relaxes and sits back a little, clearly aware Peter needs the space for this to go slow. 

Peter pushes himself up on his knees to rock onto the balls of his feet and stand but his momentum is a little much and he tips forward, off-balance. He extends his arms to catch himself but his hands never hit the ground, because Tony grabs his forearms and props him up.

Tony’s hands are warm where they grab him, even the hand of the prosthesis. Peter’s breath catches in his throat and he looks up with wide, scared eyes. There’s a comforting smile on Tony’s face, as if he’s expected all of this. He’s so close that Peter can smell the fancy soap that Tony has imported from Italy. He hasn’t smelled it in so long, complemented by motor oil and something else he can’t quite place but the sense memory practically slaps him in the face. It _is_ real, and Tony’s hands are _warm_ ; Quentin’s illusions were hollow and cold, and Peter moves forward before he can think to hold back and wraps his arms around Tony’s chest. 

Peter can hear his heart beating. Steady, strong, and grounding---it’s a good way to pick up on how someone is thinking or feeling, but he swears it’s never sounded so wonderful before. Peter presses himself further into Tony’s chest ( _warm,_ he thinks _, full of blood and moving parts, not anything like the decaying Mark_ ) and he feels the man’s hand settle in his hair, fingers weaving into the curls as Tony presses his cheek to the top of Peter’s head.

“Aw, kid.” 

Tony gives him a few more minutes to collect himself. He says very little to Peter, mostly only soft assurances and calm words. When Peter realizes they’re probably to the point of rudeness for keeping Pepper waiting, he pulls back and shyly avoids looking back over at Tony. It doesn’t discourage the older man; he merely rubs Peter’s shoulder and helps him to his feet before guiding them back towards the stairs. When they enter the kitchen, Pepper is waiting at the dining room table already, an impatient yet indulgent look on her face, fingers wrapped around the stem of a wine glass. 

“I thought I was gonna have to send up a search party,” She remarks dryly, eyes narrowing as she bounces back and forth between the two. Her shoulders droop a little and she peers closer at Peter, expression softening. “Pete, you alright kid?”

Peter feels like he’s swallowed a frog, but he nods, forcing a smile. “Yeah...yeah, I am. Mr. Stark just was helping me with something...for some last minute school work I picked up over the summer. Nothing crazy.”

Her mouth twists in a half-smile. She sends a look at Tony, who by now has made his way to her side. “Mr. Stark, huh?”

“We slipped back into the formalities a bit, you know how that happens when we disagree on stuff occasionally,” Tony is looking at Peter when he says it, raising his brows, and Peter nods along.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, Pep. Tony just said we’d figure it out in the lab after supper...if that was alright with you, of course.” 

It earns him an eye roll. “As if I’d expect anything different from the two of you, especially considering everyone is getting here tomorrow.” She motions towards the seats across the table. “The pork is getting cold, now sit and eat.”

Peter can’t help but be curious about what she means by that, by _everyone_. Were they still doing some kind of birthday thing for the weekend? Is Morgan still at camp? Peter swallows a few times, trying to calm the roiling in his stomach. He picks at the food---one of his favorites, Pepper knows him---and he compliments it, nodding along as Tony chatters away, seemingly eager to fill the silence that has settled over the kitchen.

Both of them know Pepper isn’t convinced for a second.

Peter claims dish duty for the night and Tony follows Pepper upstairs to talk about something that she was really not subtle about. He tries not to eavesdrop too much---their room is on the adjacent side of the house, far enough away from the kitchen that it’s muffled because they’re definitely speaking softly on his account.

“Pep, I promise, it’s nothing bad---”

“He was fine when he got here a few hours ago, Tony. He came down the stairs looking like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Well, the house was built on an old family cemetery. Did I forget to mention that when we bought the land?”

Peter makes a face, shaking his head. Attempts at humor to diffuse the situation didn’t work great when Pepper had caught the scent of something gone wrong and Peter could only imagine the look on her face. They’d have to come up with something to tell her later.

A _ghost_. It wasn’t far off though, was it? Tony was essentially that. Peter’s hands were suds covered, wrinkled by warm water. He grips the edge of the farmhouse sink, bending at the waist, letting out a heavy sigh.

He decides to block the rest of the conversation the best he can. Pepper comes down first, gliding into the now dimly lit kitchen in slippers and a linen bathrobe over silk pajamas, a soft smile on her face. She grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and walks over to him, surveying the dishes. 

“Much better than when Tony does it,” She compliments. “You didn’t even spray my wall.”

Peter chuckles, dipping his head bashfully. When he looks up, she is still smiling but she looks a little concerned, like she knows there’s something going on that they’re not telling her.

“I know you probably heard some of that,” She says softly. “You guys can work it out and explain later, but....you’re sure you’re okay, honey?”

Peter stomach twists. He _hates_ lying to the people he cares about, he’s hated it for a long time. Especially to someone like Pepper, who is practically a human polygraph. They’ve grown close in the past few years, or they had---Peter had tried to help fill the hole Tony left in their lives, along with Happy and Rhodes. If Tony has never been gone, where does that leave them? He doesn’t want to seem too familiar and freak her out.

“Yeah,” He nods. “Yeah, I’m just...the assignment just ended up being a little more...comprehensive, than I expected. But we’ll work it out tonight, I promise. It’ll be fine tomorrow.”

She presses her lips together and hums. She brings a hand to his face, brushing at his hair, then plants a kiss to his temple, squeezing his shoulder.

“Don’t let him keep you up until 3 in the morning, hm? Make sure he comes to bed too. May and Happy are swinging by the camp to bring Morgan in the early afternoon. You said MJ and Ned would be here for dinner, right?”

He nods, though he doesn’t remember saying that at all. 

“So. Rest up. You’re on Morgan duty tomorrow until then.” She winks at him. “I hope you guys get everything figured out.”

“We will.” Peter assures softly, and watches as she turns and heads up the stairs. He sighs again, looking around the kitchen to make sure everything's in its place before heading out towards the garage, where Tony’s lab is set up.

He pauses before he opens the door. Peter hasn’t been in the lab too often. After what happened at the Compound, it felt eerily like a mausoleum; cold and barren, some kind of frozen in time shrine to what Tony had left behind. They’d cleaned it out the best they could, but DUM-E was still there, tucked in a corner and covered in a sheet. Pepper had said she wanted to keep him in case Morgan wanted to bring him around when she was older but for right now, she thought it was best that he was asleep.

Morgan dragged him in there a few times though. She would painstakingly walk Peter through things she could remember Tony doing---showing her the car engines, modeling really basic circuit boards, and making light bulbs flicker in patterns. Her daddy had called them fairy lights, Morgan informed him, and told her that if she wished really hard on them, that maybe the wishes would come true.

“Do you think…,” She’d asked quietly, the last time they’d been there. “If you could get them lighted again Peter, and I asked really, really nice...that daddy might come home?”

Peter had decided he didn’t want to go back to the lab for a while after that. 

Tony’s voice jolts him from his thoughts. “You gonna stand out there all night like a disgruntled prom date or are you gonna come in?”

Peter rolls his eyes, clearing his throat. Grasping the doorknob, he pushes it open and finds---

DUM-E whirs to life at his entrance, chirping and swinging around, rolling backward and forwards a few inches. Tony smiles up at him, already fiddling with something behind his workbench. 

Surreal is an understatement, but Peter still has to stifle a laugh. Tony is wearing _spectacles_ \---Peter makes a note to somehow slip a Benjamin Franklin joke in tonight--and he’s wearing a ridiculous red velvet robe over a pair of flannel pants and an old ratty band t-shirt, far less elegant than what Pepper was wearing. Peter lets the door close behind him, folding his hands in front of him.

“Did Pepper read you the riot act? I tried to stop her.”

“She...didn’t. I think she’s just...worried.”

Tony watches him for a quiet moment, then sets down the screwdrivers he’s been fiddling with and pushes his chair back from the workbench. “We have a lot to discuss.”

Peter just nods and makes his way towards one of the stools at a slow pace---he doesn’t sit, resting his hands on the seat. His skin feels prickly, like there’s electricity in the air; he’s not sure what to say, but he’s just trying to take it in at this point. 

The lab is full of just...junk, is what it looks like. Workpapers strewn about in haphazardly managed piles, pieces of metal here and there, the holographic schematics filling the middle of the room seemed evidencing that Tony was in the middle of a pretty major project. 

“That’s...nothing,” Tony explains lamely. “I’m retired, I am.”

Peter can’t help but laugh out loud. “I was literally just thinking that it kind of looked like you weren’t.”

Tony only smiles. “Old habits are hard to break. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this since after we got everyone back.” The smile stays but his eyes take on a more pained expression. “I hope you’ve been doing okay the past couple years. I know there’s a lot to explain.”

“Why do I have the feeling you already have answers for whatever question I can come up with?”

Tony grins at that. He sits up straighter on the stool he’s on, crossing his arms. “First things first---how are you doing? You feel alright? You’re looking a little…” His mouth stretches into a half grimace, making a so-so movement with his upper body. “You’re looking a little wan there.”

“Yeah, well, my mentor just came back from the dead, so you’re gonna have to give me a minute.”

Tony’s cheek twitches with the hint of a smile. “Mentor huh? Aw, Pete, I’m touched.” 

The attempt to lighten the mood doesn’t land. Any sign of amusement fades from his expression and Tony is suddenly solemn, eyes serious, peering closely to Peter. He sighs. “In all seriousness---how are you doing?”

“Honestly, right now, I think I’m a little bit in shock.”

“I think we’ve established that,” Tony says measuredly. “I meant all the other stuff. School, your girlfriend, Spidermanning---how’s all that going?”

“It’s good. As far as I know, I guess? This...might change that stuff right?”

“Shouldn’t. I’ve tried to keep a wide berth, let you live your life as much as I could without interrupting things. I didn’t know what exactly had happened here and I didn’t want to mess anything up if this was how it was going to play out. I had your emails to go by, so I just made sure not to interrupt any of it.” 

“So I’m still with MJ?”

Tony nods. “Still with MJ. Living with Ned. Happy and May are together, which you didn’t mention by the way, for obvious reasons, but oh my god?”

“I _know_.” Peter’s hands curl into fists and he raises them to the sky in mock exasperation. “She could do worse though.”

“Oh for sure, same for him. Still.” Tony grins at him for a moment before relaxing into something more serious. “I can’t help but feel….a little responsible for all this you’re going through though,” Tony says softly. “The stuff with the Bugle and you feeling like you don’t have a personal life. I’m the one that brought you into this, it’s not really fair…”

“MJ made a really good point when we had that fight in March,” Peter interrupts. “I said I didn’t have a choice, but she said I _did_ , and she’s right. I don’t have to still be going out when I’m home from break. I could give it up but I don’t want to. You didn’t bring me into this, I was in this when you found me. You just...helped me get better at it.”

“Yeah. but the past few years---”

“I’ve still had you,” Peter says softly, looking up at him finally. “With E.D.I.T.H and the email thing.” Peter shrugs, sitting down on a couch behind him. “I mean, I might not have _known_ it was you, but you’ve...it’s been nice. Having someone to talk to. It felt like you.” And he smiles, a little wobbly. “I guess now I know why.”

Tony stills for a moment. Peter can see his throat bob up and down a couple of times, hears him clear his throat. When he responds, his tone is weak and airy. “Still. Jameson’s a problem. I could always show up for a little chat…”

“Tony,” Peter says tiredly. “You can’t keep people from saying bad things about me.”

“I mean, I could just pull a Bezos and buy the newspaper.”

“Tony.”

“You’re right, and believe me, I’m kind of the expert on that but what I _can_ do is let you rail at me for about an hour over the phone about how much of a douchebag Jonah Jameson is.”

Peter bites his lip to keep the smile that he’s fighting back. Because---he’s right. Rhodey hasn’t really dealt with the kind of flack Tony had endured. And yeah, people are shitty to Sam because they’re racist assholes and the shit Peter gets from the Bugle garbage pales in comparison to that. 

Tony _knows_ what it’s like to have people say things, even if they can’t really hurt him. He gets it, that at the end of the day, who gives a shit what Jameson and the readers of garbage like the Bugle think of him? 

But it does. It does matter.

“You said...you said you were done. In that last email.” Peter’s gaze shifts to look at something, anything other than how Tony was surveying him now, twitching under the focus. “I thought…”

“I was,” Tony says softly. He’s looking right at Peter, expression tender, pained and he clears his throat. “By the time I'd come back from Titan, it had been 3 weeks since everyone was snapped away. I had nothing from you. I assumed...I assumed the worst. I figured you would have at least reached out and when you didn’t…” He shakes his head. “It was just too much, Pete. I was done. It was...I was in a real bad place.”

Pepper had told him a little about it. She’d tried to do it gently, but there were shadows that played across from her face when she’d mention it. Her voice would go soft, almost trembling, when she talked about Tony coming back from Titan, getting well. Their wedding. His distancing from the rest of the team. 

“Morgan kind of saved him,” Pepper had whispered. “She saved _us_. I don’t know what he would have done---”

And she’d trail off, look away, change the subject. Peter nods, coming back to the present.

“Yeah um...Pepper kind of told me.”

Tony smiles back at him tightly. “Yeah. I was...I was not a real pleasant person to be around for a while there, I’m lucky she hung with me. Morgan entered the picture shortly after and that just...changed stuff. We...moved forward. Putting everything behind me, that was...it seemed like the best thing I could do for me and for them.”

“Until Scott came back.” 

Tony nods. “I...almost didn’t. I almost...let them handle it on their own. But, that was kind of how we got into this mess in the first place. I learn from my mistakes. Not happily, but I do.” He scratches at the back of his head. “After the time-traveling and Nat,” Tony stops, licking his lips, taking a moment. He clears his throat and doesn’t look up from the floor. “It took us a week or so to get the Gauntlet together. The night before we were getting ready to use it, I just felt like...I needed to leave something. Just in case something went wrong. Even losing Nat, it just felt...too easy, ya know?” He shakes his head. "I'd recorded something before the time-traveling stuff, but it didn't feel like enough. I decided to write a few letters, something more personal, just in case."

Peter nods, a little sad. “I remember the hologram message.” 

“You saw it then?” Tony asks softly.

“They played it at your service.”

Tony blinks back at that, once or twice, then shakes his head. “That...god, that just feels weird to hear.” HIs eyes dart back and forth before he sighs and continues. “Anyway. I guess I got a little...verklempt about the whole thing. Little nostalgic. And I started looking back through stuff and was up all night. Ended up spinning back up that email server.” He fixes Peter with a look then. “I thought it was a joke. I was furious at first but then when I read it...when I saw the month and the day, I remembered you mentioning how you visited your old boss’s family on his birthday for some kind of barbeque.”

“You believed it enough to do something different.”

“I figured that in the event that this crazy, insane thing might have some sliver of truth, updating the gauntlet and the suit to reroute that primary surge of radiation in a way that it wouldn’t fry me like a Filet O’Fish couldn’t hurt. Even put some vials of Extremis and hypodermic injection sites built into the suit to keep my heart going. When it actually happened, well,” Tony shrugs. “I’m a believer.”

Peter wonders what that was like. It’s clear from Tony’s left side that he was unable to escape entirely unscathed, but even being able to minimize that level of power was a feat in and of itself. Tony seems to notice the quiet examination Peter’s conducting and he smiles a bit sheepishly.

“It’s not all that bad,” He says softly, then he winks. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

“No, that’s not---” Peter stumbles, flushing warm and ducks his head. Because he’s not wondering….he’s sure that it was bad, but selfishly, ridiculously, he’s thinking what it must’ve been like...for himself.

What it would’ve been like to not have to watch the light in Mr. Stark’s eyes fade, head lolling to the side as his body went still.

“Hey, kid,” Tony peers at him, tilting his head. “I don’t know where you’re at right now, but I’m right here. Aren’t you just the least bit curious what happened next?”

Peter slides back into reality then, blinking fast. He nods, almost in a daze, trying to shake away the awful memories. He walks over to the couch against the wall of the lab and sits, leaning forwards, elbows on his knees, ready to listen. 

“So after the Compound,” Tony says with a sigh. “Strange was pretty surprised that I had, um, not died.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“So, that was a common point of discussion,” Tony says with a sigh. “It took me a little while to decide whether or not to even bring it up to him, though he kept asking all these weird-ass questions. Popping into my lab via portal without even a call, can you even imagine how rude that is?”

“Tony.”  
  


“Sorry.” Tony waves it away. “Anyway. Everything with us…” He motions between Peter and himself. “It was fine. I didn’t know...anything about your high school stuff, so I kept that to myself. Even if it was a different timeline, you seemed well adjusted. And I promised Pepper during my rehab that I was done, off-limits, for _good_. So I mostly kept myself radio silent unless you reached out to visit. Until after London, of course.”   
  


Peter swallows hard. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Uh. _Yeah_.” Tony replies, a matter of factly. “Pepper practically had to threaten me with divorce papers when I demanded to go instead of Happy and the only reason I didn’t really take her up on it was that I was still in my wheelchair. After that, I opened up communication a little more but I wanted....”

Tony presses his mouth shut, and Peter can tell he’s trying to choose his words carefully. His good hand is covering his mouth as he peers up at Peter thoughtfully. He sighs.

“In your emails, you’d had a girlfriend and you had college and while you were, you know...experiencing growing pains, as everyone does at the point in their life, you seemed...alright. And I didn’t want to mess anything up, you know? And I wasn’t even sure...I didn’t know how this was gonna shake out. All I had to do was go on was the date of the email.” Tony frowns then. “Still not sure what kind of hocus pocus was going on in the wires that the timestamps caught up with the year.”

“I really didn’t know,” Tony continues softly. “When I came upstairs earlier, I wasn’t sure if I was just going to be grabbing you know...the Peter of the last two years or someone different.” 

A pang of guilt washes over Peter then and he feels a bit like a fraud. His expression must darken clearly because Tony shakes his head, standing up and hurrying around his workbench to sit next to Peter on the couch.

“It’s still you,” Tony assures. “I know that. It’s just...another blip.” He forces a smile in a clear effort to make Peter feel better but he’s not sure that he does.

It feels selfish. For two years another Peter has existed and now he’s gone---a Peter that MJ fell in love with, that Pepper and Morgan got to know and now it’s just him and what if he’s not enough? What if he loses MJ over this, what if his relationships with everyone else falls apart?

But then he remembers what losing had felt like---an aching, open wound, it never felt like it was going to close. He thinks of the person he is and he hopes---he knows---faced with the choice of losing Tony altogether, or having to make up those 2 years?

It’s a no brainer.

“So...what do we do now?”

“Well, we figure it out.” Tony offers finally. “That’s why I brought up the Wizard of Waverly Place. It took him a bit to wrap his head around, but I showed him the emails and I started explaining the timeline. We worked through it a bit over lots of coffee and arguments but came up with a hypothesis that is better than anything I could think of.” Tony leans back against the couch, tucking an arm behind his head while lifting his good leg onto his other knee. “He essentially thinks me dying was an unacceptable outcome for the universe,” At that, Tony offers a grin. “Apparently the world does kind of revolve around me.”

Peter can’t help but roll his eyes. “Oh my god…”

“Alright, alright, don’t hurt yourself, kid.” Tony sits up, leaning forward. “He basically thinks it was like...a crack in the universe. Somehow, he was wrong about that 1 in 14 million thing---and just a tip going forward, the guy does _not_ like having that pointed out about anything he does---but whatever he thought he saw he read it wrong.”

“So the email thing...was like...the universe setting itself right again?”

Tony shrugs. “We have a meeting with him next week at the Sanctum to discuss. I told him no shop talk this weekend, but don’t be surprised if he’s giving you the side-eye during the party on Saturday. He’s itching to figure this out.”

“So,” Peter says softly, so much so that Tony almost doesn’t hear him. His throat feels like it’s closing up and he’s trying to keep his breath from picking up. Because this can’t be….it can’t be real, right, like nothing has ever come back his way and…

“Hey. Hey, slow down,” Tony soothes, resting a hand on his shoulder. “If I know you at all, you’re trying to find the hole here and I get it, I’ve been trying for a few years now. I didn’t know if we’d end up here or if we had split the difference, but we are. We’re here, and now we get to figure out what that looks like going forward.”

“So...what now? Am I gonna like...remember stuff, or do I just have to hope for the best….?”

“That’s up to you to decide. I’ll support whatever it is.” Tony assures. “I don’t know if you’re gonna get any of these memories, that’ll be a Strange question. But if you don’t and you want to tell the important people---MJ and May and anyone else---we can do that. I’ll be right there the whole time.”

Peter wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d have to call MJ tomorrow, just to get a feel for where they were at. Maybe Tony would know something. He’ll only be able to fake it for so long, and it might be better to bring it up to her first instead of keeping it from her, and everyone else. 

“You’re real,” Peter says finally, and it’s not a question. “You came back. Like, you’re _here_.”

“I am, I'm here. You saved me, kid.” For effect, because Peter knows he still doesn’t look like he’s quite sure of all this, Tony scoots closer and hesitantly rests his good arm around the boy’s shoulder. Peter stills for a quiet moment, still a little worried to believe, before relaxing into the man’s side. He feels Tony’s hand tighten where it settled on his arm, pulling him close, feels as Tony’s chin rests against the top of his head as he whispers,

“I’m right here.”

**Author's Note:**

> lakehouse au, the keanu reeves/sandra bullock movie from like 2004. 
> 
> thanks to [@thegooseprincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegooseprincess/pseuds/thegooseprincess) for the awesome art work!


End file.
